


His Word Is His Bond

by Aesoleucian



Series: Incident Reports from the Usher Foundation [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Statement, Usher Foundation, challenged myself to write a web statement with zero mention of spiders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 10:16:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17681543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesoleucian/pseuds/Aesoleucian
Summary: Statement of Donald King Miller regarding a series of experiments in trust-building at the Langley-Porter Psychiatric Institute, given March 29, 1985.





	His Word Is His Bond

**Author's Note:**

> This contains a tiny bit of torture and mutilation, no graphic details though.

Branch location: Usher Foundation San Francisco, 1529 Ocean Avenue.

Instance reported by: _Donald King Miller_  
Reporter initial and date: _D.K.M. March 29 1985_

Witness: _Angela Gallup_                            ID#: _00346_  
Witness initial and date: _A.G. March 29 1985_

Incident summary: _Experiments in trust-building at the Langley-Porter Psychiatric Institute._  
Description of incident: _(attached)_

 

[Transcript begins]

AG: All right, the tape is recording. You can start when you’re ready.

DKM: Okay. So, uh, you’ve probably seen those advertisements for people to participate in clinical studies. They have them on BART sometimes, and in grocery stores near campus and things like that. You can usually get pretty good money from them if you’re the right kind of person—you know, some of them your dad needs to be schizophrenic or you need to have insomnia. But a lot of them they just want a healthy adult. Now, this one I saw in… early February I guess. I can’t remember exactly… oh, no, I have it written down. I write down all of them so I won’t forget the phone number, I swear I would lose my own head if it wasn’t nailed on. Here. ‘Wanted: adults twenty-four to sixty years of age for an experiment in trust-building. Call this number before February 15th, one hundred dollars per session.’ That sounded pretty good to me, so I called. They weren’t interested in doing any kind of screening or anything, they just wanted to get me set up with a time. That’s not all that unusual, though. You really only have to bring paperwork if they want proof you have some kind of medical condition. So I made sure it wouldn’t take more than three hours and that Thursday before my shift I went up to Frisco to Langley-Porter. That’s the psychiatric research hospital on campus.

I was waiting for the train—I like to get there a little early, I’m _never_ late to appointments. I just can’t stand it. So I was standing waiting and this White guy comes up to me. Says his name’s Kevan, starts to talk to me about the NBA. He was really interested in my opinion too, like on the Warriors lineup and all their chances and everything. So we talked for a couple minutes, and he seems like an all right guy. At one point he has to run off and asks me to take care of his bag. I don’t remember what he said he needed to do, but he came back and my train came and he waved me off with this big smile on his face. And I thought he was just one of those people who’ll talk to anyone who’ll listen, just a friendly guy.

[DKM sighs] Until I walked into the testing room and saw him sitting at the table. I stopped in the doorway. I wasn’t really sure what to say, because that’s a hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? But Kevan smiled and told me to sit down, and I did.

He explained that meeting me while I was waiting for the train was part of the experiment. There was a control group of people who wouldn’t have met their tester before it started, then people who’d do a trust-building exercise before the test, then people like me who got to know them in a less formal setting. I felt strange about that, especially after he pointed out that he’d already found I trusted him when he asked me to watch his bag while we were waiting for the train. See, I don’t call that trust. I don’t call that doing a favor. I call that common courtesy. But I wasn’t really there to do good science. That was on them. I was just there to get paid, so I didn’t say anything.

We chatted a little more, and even though I never quite forgot it was for research I did kind of relax. He just seemed really interested in what I had to say. Oh, I think I started complaining about my job, and he said yeah, his day job was waiting tables and he knew how I felt. Then after maybe half an hour he gave me a questionnaire and some more forms to fill out, and he sat there and watched me do them. How much time would you spend helping your tester if you were late to an appointment, rate how interested you are in his life, would you join an organization he recommended. Standard stuff. Even though I knew he was only talking to me to get my trust, I kind of couldn’t help liking him. And when I was done he said I could get my money from the assistant outside, and that he’d be so grateful if I came back next week or the week after to continue. It was good money, so I did. Except thinking back on it I don’t know if that’s the whole reason I came back.

So the second session he wanted me to do some simple things for him. Trust falls, sorting names alphabetically, other boring stuff, and all the time when I wasn’t working he was chatting to me about something. At the end he said there was something I could do for a little extra money, to show my trust. He held out this pen-looking thing and said it would give me a mild electric shock, wouldn’t do any permanent damage, but I’d get an extra fifty. It seemed like a good deal, so I clicked it and got shocked. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was definitely worth fifty dollars. Then he told me he lied, and I wasn’t getting the money for it. But if I’d do it again, even knowing that, I really would get those fifty dollars, because that would show a lot of trust. Guess what? He lied again. I liked the guy, but I could see what he was doing for the experiment. I didn’t stick around to get lied to again after that, and I’m sure he had a great time writing that down on his clipboard. I just don’t have the biggest stores of trust in the first place. A guy who looks like me, you don’t get very far trusting White people. But the assistant, Brenda or Bernadette or something, she got me my money, even the bonus Kevan promised me, and said I was welcome to come back. I trusted her a little more since I’d signed some forms, you know, they have a code of ethics to follow. My mistake was thinking I was ever outside the experiment. My mistake was thinking they ever said _anything_ that wasn’t a test.

The third time I came things started to get way outside normal psychological tests. I really shouldn’t have gone back. I should have been way more afraid, but nothing before that made me think that it was anything except an experiment that required everyone to be an a—a real jerk. I still trusted the institution to get me my money, and to follow their code of ethics. Get paid, I thought, buy Lisa something nice. But that was when the experiments started getting bad. I came in and Kevan said today we were going to test how much I would trust him even when I didn’t have all the information. To just do what I was told even if I didn’t know what it was. He asked me to press a button he’d set up, which I guess had a radio transmitter or something because it wasn’t wired to anything. I pressed it, and there was a scream over the loudspeaker I hadn’t noticed in the corner of the room. Kevan told me to press it again, and I asked what it did. “It just plays a scream,” he said. “It’s pre-recorded.” It sounded so real to me, but I thought, well, they must have hired an actor. So I pressed it again.

The scream was different that time. Does it make sense to say it sounded hopeless? At the end the woman—the one who screamed, I mean—started sobbing, before the speaker cut out. I asked if he was sure it wasn’t a real person getting hurt in some other room, and he smiled this real friendly smile and said of course not, that would be against HIPAA. “We can’t hurt people against their will,” he said. I don’t know why that sent a shiver down my spine. I guess even that early I knew that free will didn’t mean much in there.

He told me to press it again, but I didn’t want to. I just shook my head. He leaned forward across the table and told me I would be helping a lot, that it didn’t matter what I heard, it was just a test. I couldn’t move. I wouldn’t press the button again, but as much as I wanted to stand up and walk out I couldn’t do that either. I sat like a statue for what felt like an hour, until Kevan shrugged and laughed and slid the questionnaire forms across the table toward me. I filled them out, even though I felt sick. I could say I didn’t think I’d get paid if I didn’t do them, but the truth is I could barely think straight and I couldn’t figure out how to do anything except what he told me to.

Bernadette at the desk asked when was the next time I could come in, and I said I wasn’t coming back. She asked why—I guess she was trying to get me not to leave—I think I just told her it was too much for me. I’d had enough. She said I was welcome back any time if I changed my mind, but she let me go.

No, no, she didn’t let me go. Two weeks later it was her who pulled me back in. See, we had to put down our phone numbers, which was supposed to be just so they could contact us if we missed a session, to reschedule. But she called me around dinner time and asked when I was planning to come back. I was so surprised I told her I could come tomorrow. Was I just surprised? That can’t be all it was. No, like I said, there’s no place that’s outside their experiment. They don’t care if I’m in their damn room or home with my wife trying to have dinner. It’s all part of the test to them. You know, I went to that appointment meaning to tell her I was quitting. I thought that… it would be polite to do it in person? I don’t know what I was thinking. But the second she told me to go on in because Kevan was ready for me, I just did it without thinking. That was the last session I went to, two days ago, but I can’t be sure I won’t go back. That’s what scares me the most. Even after what he made me do, I might go back if she calls me again. I haven’t been able to go to work, I can’t even pick anything up with this hand. I probably won’t be able to for weeks. Lisa’s worried about me, and hell, she should be! I can’t explain to her why I listened to him just because he told me he had some kind of really quick painkiller. He did, you know? It didn’t hurt until hours later. But it was still a damn stupid thing to do, it’s not like a doctor can just sew your finger back on and it’ll work right. But he made it seem like the… the _normal_ thing to do, for just long enough for me to pick up the knife… Hell, you don’t want to hear about this. I don’t want to talk about this. I just need to know if this is some kind of hypnotism or something. Did he hypnotize me? Is that why I came back even though I’m scared to death of him? Can you make it _stop_?

AG: We… I’m sorry, Mr. Miller, but we don’t have any research that suggests that hypnotism actually works.

DKM: There’s got to be something. Are they drugging me somehow? I _know_ I wouldn’t be doing this if they weren’t _making_ me do it.

AG: Have you heard of the Milgram experiment?

DKM: What?

AG: It was an experiment they did at Yale in 1961 that I think inspired this one. It was designed to test how far people would obey authority figures even if it meant hurting someone else. Most of the subjects ended up administering lethal shocks to another person—or they thought they were—just because a researcher told them to. It’s not out of the question for this to be the same effect.

[Sound of a chair being pushed out.]

DKM: Fine. Fine, you can’t help me. I don’t really expect much from _research institutions_ anyway. I’ll figure something out on my own. Or I’ll keep going back until Kevan makes me kill myself. That’s all, nothing for you to worry about. I hope you have nice day, Mrs. Gallup.

[Door opens and then closes. There is silence on the tape for about thirty seconds before another chair is pushed out.]

AG: Wait—

Why did I… I didn’t agree to this. They didn’t tell me they were doing _that_ to them. They didn’t _te—_

[Transcript ends]

 

Follow-up:

_Bernice Lake called three hours after this report was given to request the transcript. I obtained permission to interview as many other study participants as was feasible; the list of telephone numbers she provided is attached. I also asked her not to influence my assistants, but she professed ignorance of any such thing._

_When Angela called Mr. Miller’s household for the two-week follow-up, Miller’s wife Lisa Coronado answered and said that he refused to speak to anyone on the telephone, as he was convinced that he would be forced to return to the trust experiment. When asked what she thought, Coronado said that it was the experiment’s fault her husband had lost his job, and that she did not want to talk about it when it was no-one’s business but their own._

_Angela and Ian interviewed three other participants in the same study (see reports 1985/21 B through D). They also inquired into the study’s funding and found that the grant came from the Chicago-based Swann Corporation. We have not been able to find much about Ms. Eudora Swann, the CEO, but perhaps the Chicago branch can. Please request that they look into her history._

_Recommendation: Keep. All four reports from participants of this experiment are obviously genuine. The only question remains what type and degree of control was exerted on the participants… and on our own assistants._

_Anthony Ducheval, head archivist UFSF. 12 th April 1985._


End file.
